


all the fire of the end of the world

by Lirazel



Category: Last of the Mohicans (1992)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fix-It, Yuletide, Yuletide 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:06:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21823384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirazel/pseuds/Lirazel
Summary: Sick with fear, throbbing with adrenaline, mind convulsing with half-imagined visions of what could happen to Alice Munro, still, he waits.The promontory redux: Uncas waits.
Relationships: Alice Munro/Uncas
Comments: 18
Kudos: 86
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	all the fire of the end of the world

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tenillypo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tenillypo/gifts).



Here’s the difference: Uncas waits. Sick with fear, throbbing with adrenaline, mind convulsing with half-imagined visions of what could happen to Alice Munro, still, he waits. How many heartbeats? Few enough to count, yet it feels like a year. His hands flex around the barrel of his musket, and Father’s hand rests fleetingly on his shoulder, the kind of silent reassurance that Father has given him from his earliest moments. For once, it doesn’t help. If Uncas were the kind to vocalize his feelings, he would throw his head back and howl out his pain, his fear, his rage. But that has never been his way. He shoves away the thought of Magua’s hand wrapped around Alice’s frail arm and forces himself to plan. There are a dozen warriors with Magua, only three to face them, but his family has faced worse odds before. 

By the time his brother emerges from the trees, Miss Munro’s hand tight in his, Uncas has run through many scenarios. His brother presses a kiss to Miss Munro’s forehead and makes another one of his vows. “We will bring her back.” 

Uncas doesn’t wait to hear it; now that he knows Nathaniel is with them, he launches himself upward, Father just behind him, and he knows Nathaniel will follow. If Uncas were paying attention to such things, he would probably hear Miss Munro struggling after them. But his mind is already up the mountain.

When he wants to, Uncas can move through the woods as silently as a deer, disturbing nothing around him and leaving no sign of his passing. Now he plunges through the trees, always upward, branches slashing at his face, feet scrabbling against stone, making as much noise as a wounded bear. It doesn’t matter: all caution is sacrificed to speed.

“They can only move as fast as she can go.” It’s Nathaniel’s voice, panting from somewhere behind him. “We’re faster.” 

Nathaniel is like that, saying things that are obvious because he believes they will be a comfort, when really they’re just a waste of breath. Uncas knew that without Nathaniel saying it. It changes nothing. They’d tied her hands, rope biting into the impossibly pale and soft skin of her wrists. He’d marveled at those wrists, so delicate in his large hands, resisted the temptation to press his lips to them. The thought of that velvet skin being ripped by the rope gives him a new burst of speed. The burn in his legs, in his lungs is welcome: it keeps him from thinking of anything else that could happen to her. 

The mountain rises on and on, never-ending, something from his nightmares. In all of his worst dreams, Uncas’s family is in danger--Father and Nathaniel, the Camerons, his half-Lenape cousins out west--and Uncas cannot reach them. He tries to run but his legs are weighed down like boulders. Or he does run but never gets any closer. It’s like that now: he runs on and on, up and up, and he feels like he’s standing still.

He surprises the first Huron; despite his fear, Uncas’s mind was working enough to guide him out in front of them, and he gets off a few shots, hears at least one body fall, but he doesn’t pause to wait for the others to come to him. The musket works just as well as a club, made powerful by the strength of his fury, and when it grows useless, he throws it aside, his knife and tomahawk leaping into his hands. He’s aware of shots behind him, the double explosion that shouts of Nathaniel firing with two muskets. He knows Father is there, too, swinging his war club with a strength only slightly diminished by age. He races around the corner of the promontory without caution, and there she is.

She makes no sound when her eyes meet his, but in the midst of gunsmoke, blood, and chaos, he sees even from this distance her little intake of breath. His heart lurches with relief to see her standing upright, no blood except the raw red of her wrists, her hair still in that plait he’d braided under the waterfall. She had had ducked her head when he took her hair into his hands, and even in the shadows, he knew her skin had flushed. But when she had lifted her eyes to his, they had been alive again. They aren’t always--sometimes, when the memories overcome her, her eyes go blank and dead as a corpse’s. To see her there, fully at home in herself, had stilled his thundering heart after she had strayed too close to the falls. Her eyes are alive now, warmth like sunlight across the distance between them, and though they hold each other’s gazes for only the space of a heartbeat, for the moment it is enough.

After that, there’s only the fight: the heft of his tomahawk as he swings it, the reverberation up his arm as it meets flesh, the sharp slice of the knife. He takes his share of cuts, too, ignores them. At one point he finds himself and Nathaniel fighting back to back; at another, a figure leaps out at him then staggers and drops as a bullet rips through his bare chest--Miss Munro is somewhere, crouched behind a boulder, picking off who she can with her pistol. He hears the slick thud of Father’s war club burying itself in some Huron’s torso. And there is Magua.

Later, he will admit that his fighting grew sloppy. Father taught him to use his feelings as fuel but only up to the point where they are useful. “Let them slide out of your hands, and they will make you stupid,” Father would say. “That is what will kill you.”

It nearly kills him now. The rush of rage he feels at the sight of Magua’s face--smug, sneering--makes him stupid, just as Father had said, and Magua’s knife finds its opening. The feel of the knife, slicing into Uncas’s gut, is less pain than it is surprise. He staggers forward, but then Father is there, stealing Magua’s attention. Uncas staggers; his legs are weak though the pain hasn’t caught up with him yet. But the shock of it is enough to wake him up, and he meets the next enemy who rushes him. He isn’t sure afterwards whether he fought that Huron alone or if Nathaniel helps; the world has started to go red, with black around the edges, and he doesn’t know who strikes the final blow, only that there’s no one to fight any longer.

He lets himself drop to his knees then, shakes off the pain long enough to see Father sweep Magua right off the cliff. Then he’s looking for Alice, and there she is, scrambling across the rock towards him. He musters up enough strength to raise his hand, to reach it out to her, then freezes when he sees the red dripping from it. But Alice doesn’t pause, though he hears her dress rip as it snags on the rock. Then she is wrapping her arms around him, pulling him up against her chest, his body between her legs, cradling him.

When he had held her, under the waterfall, she’d been shaking and sobbing. Now she’s still except for the hummingbird flutter of her heart against his back, the tightening of her arms around his body. Her hair sticks to the sweat slicking his neck, and beyond the smell of blood and smoke, he thinks he can catch a hint of her scent. Her hands press against the wound in his belly; she’s no nurse like her sister, but she knows that much. The pain of it makes stars explode before his eyes, so he closes them. 

“I’m all right.” Her breath is warm against his neck, just like it was before. Behind the waterfall, it had stirred him; now it’s only comfort, though he wonders whether she’s saying the words for him or for herself. “I’m all right and you’re all right and he’s gone now.” 

Before he sinks into the darkness, he thinks he hears Father and Nathaniel and Cora shouting, and then, against his ear, a tiny whisper, taut with emotion. A vow. “You’re going to be all right.”

\--

But it’s a long time till he’s all right again. He doesn’t remember where they took him that first night. ”A cave,” Nathaniel says. “Not even a well-hidden one. Any damn fool could have stumbled over it, but we couldn’t risk taking you further.” He’s glad he doesn’t remember anything about those first few days. When Cora decides he’s probably going to live, they somehow find a canoe, and that’s Uncas’s first real memory after the fight: gliding down the river, his wound still burning fire-bright in his gut. He thinks he remembers the camp they made after that, in a better location, but really all he knows for certain is that each time Cora changed his bandages, he was certain he was going to die. That, and sometimes the feel of a small hand holding his.

“As soon as Uncas is upright, we should press on,” Nathaniel says. Uncas remembers this clearly, because it’s soon after his fever breaks, when he can once again pay attention to the words of those around him. “Even if we only make it a mile or two a day, it’s better than nothing. The further west we get, the better I’ll feel.”

Nathaniel speaks in English instead of Mohican, which isn’t surprising. What is surprising is that Father has taken to speaking in English, too, so that the Munro women can understand. 

“We should go to my brother’s children,” Father agrees. His brother had married a Lenape woman and had many children; their village is the closest thing Uncas has had to a home since he was a boy. 

“But surely there’s no one coming after us now.” The higher pitch of Cora’s voice is just enough to make his head pound. “Magua is dead and so are his warriors. The sachem has had his blood justice.” Her voice curls around the words as though they disgust her. “We have no other enemies who would seek us out.”

“Danger don’t have to seek you out,” Nathaniel says. “War brings it to every door, no matter if the people inside want a part of it or not. We have to get out of reach of the fighting. No place on earth is safe for certain, but I’ll breathe easier when we’re out past the last of the white settlements.” 

There’s silence for a time after that. Uncas is lying where he can’t see any of them, even if he bothered to open his eyes. He hears the forced casualness in Nathaniel’s voice, though, when he adds, “Unless you were wanting us to take you back. Your father might be gone, but there are people would look after you. Send you back to England.”

“No, of course we don’t--” Cora cuts herself off, and Uncas doesn’t have to be able to see her to know that she’s remembered her sister. “I...Alice?”

There’s another space of quiet and then Alice says, “You’re going to stay here no matter what, aren’t you?”

Cora’s silence is her assent; all of them know she wouldn’t leave Nathaniel now for anything. “But darling,” she tries after a moment, “there are our aunts at home. They’ll take care of you, if that’s what you want. You can go, forget all this, have the life we were meant to have. Anyone would understand.” 

More silence. Then Alice’s voice’s soft but clear: “Where will we go when we go west? Where are your brother’s children?”

Uncas hadn’t realized he was holding his breath till he lets it out. He relaxes back into sleep to the backdrop of his father’s quiet voice telling Alice about the Lenape.

\--

The night is cool, edging into autumn, when Uncas wakes in the darkness to the sound of footsteps approaching him. When he comes awake, his body is tense, as it always is when he wakes, ready for him to launch himself into a fight or out of danger. It only takes a moment for him to recognize the sound of the footsteps and relax, but the tension had yanked at his wound and set his body to aching again. He bites back a grunt of pain and knows it will be some time before the pain eases enough to let him sleep again. 

There fire is burning low down and there’s no moon tonight, but in the starlight he sees a smudge of light against the tangled shadows, and then Alice drops down next to him, her scent familiar in the dark. “Do you need anything?” Her voice is whisper soft but urgent. “Water? More of that tea?” She insists on calling the herbs Father brews for him as ‘tea,’ despite the liquid’s foul smell. 

“No.” It doesn’t hurt to speak, but it does when he tries to push himself up onto his elbows, a sharp, hot pain like fire. And there are her hands, butterfly gentle against his shoulders, pushing him back down.

“Don’t sit up.” 

“Why aren’t you sleeping?”

She’s close enough now that he can see her face, the dismissive shake of her head. “Are you sure you don’t need anything?” 

The anxiety in her voice is such that he knows she’ll feel better if given a task, so he says, “I could do with some water.” He can see the eagerness with which she leaps up to get it, and she’s back in only moments, holding the canteen to his mouth. He pushes himself up onto his elbow again--not as high, not as sudden, the pain is less--drinks deep, then lets her ease him back down. He thinks then that she’ll go back to her sleeping spot, but she doesn’t, sitting close to him, her knee just touching his. 

Uncas has never been one to prompt someone to talk, remembering how much he hated it when the Moravian teachers would goad him to answer their questions. He has always been willing to wait for an answer, and he waits now. 

Usually, when he waits, he doesn’t have to wait long. Others, he has discovered, are not as comfortable with silence as he is. They feel anxious about it, have to fill it up, and the meaning of the words matters less than the sound of them. But Alice is quiet for a very long time, so long that when she finally speaks, he jumps, having fallen back into a drowse. 

“I’ll never see England again.” Her voice is barely louder than the snapping of the fire, the wind in the trees, but it is steady. “I know that’s what this means, staying here. Cora thinks I don’t understand that, not really, but I do. I’ll never see England again and I don’t care.” The last words are almost fierce, with a bite to them that he has not heard in her voice before. 

She’s staring into the shadows beyond the circle of the fire, and the firelight tangles in her eyes. “Father was a soldier all my life and I thought I knew what that meant. There were always men in their fine red uniforms going in and out, so busy, and sometimes Father would be called away in the middle of the night and not come back for weeks. And I’ve heard cannon go off and seen men shoot guns, but always on parade or at targets, and--” She stops abruptly, and he can feel her shaking again as she had under the waterfall. “The blood and the--I didn’t know--” He knows she’s reliving the terror of the massacre, the horror of sneaking into Fort William Henry through trenches and past corpses, and if he could sit up and pull her into his arms, he would. All he can do is gather the strength to lift his hand, to reach for hers. It’s cool and trembling, and she doesn’t seem to notice that he’s holding it at all. 

“The English kill like that--I know they do--I heard Nathaniel telling Cora. And so do the French. And the Huron. And--” Her voice breaks. 

“So do we,” he says, squeezing her hand. By ‘we’ he means his family: he and Father and Nathaniel. This girl has no idea how many times they’ve killed. 

“It’s not the same,” she says, so fast he knows she’s been having this argument over and over in her own mind. “You--you don’t attack innocent people. You _protect_ people. That’s _different_.”

He doesn’t argue with her. Most of the time, he agrees with that line of thinking, though there are times, his darkest moments, when he fears that he’s only trying to justify all the blood on his hands. 

“It’s no better here. At least there, you’d be away from the killing yourself.” There is a part of him that likes to think of her safe back home in her old life that is beyond his imaginings. But there is a greater part of him that aches with grief at the thought. 

“No.” Her tone is absolute, and she isn’t shaking anymore. “It isn’t better in the new world. It’s better with _you_.” 

For a moment, her face is right above his, the cool silk of her hair falling over her shoulder to brush against his skin, the firelight in her eyes. “You must get better,” she whispers, fierce as fire. “We’re both going to be all right.” Then her scent overtakes him for the space of a heartbeat, her lips brush his, and then she is gone, back into the darkness. 

The pain is still there in the darkness, but something else is there too.

\--

He doesn’t ask how long he’s been recovering; he doesn’t want to know. The fever and the pain have scrambled time all up, but he knows they’ve been in this camp longer than any of them are comfortable with. He gets to his feet before he’s ready; Cora’s neat stitches pull and he starts to bleed again before they’ve made it half a mile. But he insists on going the next day and the next. Pain ripping through him, weaker than he’s been since he was a child, he forces himself on. Each day, he makes it a little further before he can’t take another step.

At camp, in pain, he drinks the brew Father makes to ease his pain, forcing down the hot bitterness for the little relief it brings. Even closest to the fire, he shivers, falls immediately into half-fevered sleep. 

But always when he wakes in the night, there is a small warm body curled up next to his, pressed against him as though she wants to get closer than his pain. She doesn’t, quite, but the pain matters less when she is there. And each night, the pain is less.

Slowly, he heals.

\--

There will always be a scar, and perhaps a twinge of pain when rain approaches or when he stretches the wrong way. There will be nightmares, for both of them, and a new life, the details of which must be figured out, and there will be nothing simple about that task. But her hand is in his, as they head west towards the setting sun, the fire of the red sky before them, and they’re both all right.


End file.
